


Once Upon a Dream

by imaginary_golux



Series: Fractured Fairy Tales [11]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Sleeping Beauty Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9266675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Poe has always known that it's his fate to prick his finger on a spindle and sleep until his true love wakes him. He's not quite sure how the random stranger who wakes him is going to turn out to be his true love, though. Thankfully, the fairies have thought of that.This is all TuppingLiberty's fault.Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	

The thing is, Poe was raised knowing exactly what was going to happen. His parents have explained it to him very carefully, over and over: the christening party, the forgotten invitation, the wicked fairy, the curse, the good fairy’s mitigating blessing. At some point Poe is going to prick his finger on a spindle (why a spindle? No one has ever been able to explain that to Poe’s satisfaction) and fall into a deep and unbreakable sleep, until his true love shall find him and awaken him.

Poe’s pretty dubious about that last bit. How is some stranger supposed to be his true love? Poe has _seen_ true love, every day of his life, between his parents, and he knows it’s not just about a pretty face or a lovely voice, but about communication and understanding and trust and respect and so many other things that just plain aren’t going to be there between Poe and some random stranger who goes around kissing unconscious princes.

Who even does that, anyway? Poe would not kiss someone who was unconscious. It seems really remarkably rude.

When he’s fifteen, therefore, Poe sneaks out of the castle to visit the good fairy who turned the curse from death to sleep in the first place, and asks her quite seriously how his mysterious rescuer is supposed to be his true love if they’ve never met before. The good fairy looks at Poe for a long moment, and then she nods and presses a kiss to his forehead and says, “Do not fear, my young prince. You will know your true love well enough.”

Poe has to be content with that, because she vanishes immediately afterwards, and no matter how hard Poe looks, he can’t find her again. Which is annoying.

When he turns sixteen, he and his parents work together to design a room in the castle where Poe can sleep comfortably for a hundred years, if it takes that long. It’s up at the top of one of the towers, and Poe chooses an enormous comfortable bed and some really nice wall-tapestries covered with birds and forest scenes. It’s quite cozy, really, when they’re done.

The wicked fairy does not show up while Poe is sixteen. She does not show up while he is seventeen. She does not show up while he is eighteen, or nineteen, or twenty, and Poe is actually starting to wonder if the wicked fairy has forgotten all about him by the time his twenty-first birthday rolls around.

So of course the wicked shows up at the stroke of midnight on his birthday, in the middle of yet another party. He _looks_ like a wicked fairy, Poe thinks uncharitably, all wizened and nasty.

“Not invited to this one, either, then, boy?” he sneers at Poe, and Poe glances at his parents, who are clinging to each other in horror and dismay, and then sighs and bows politely to the wicked fairy.

“I am afraid I did not know your address, good sir, to send you an invitation,” he says smoothly, and the wicked fairy sneers even more dramatically.

“A likely story,” he says, though as it happens it’s the complete truth - Poe has made it his business to find out the addresses of every fairy, magician, and sorceress in the kingdom, and make sure that they all get invitations to every major royal event. He doesn’t want anyone _else_ to be cursed. One doomed prince is enough for any kingdom.

None of the messengers or investigators have ever been able to discover where the wicked fairy Snoke is, though. Poe thinks it’s not quite fair to conceal yourself and then demand impossible invitations; but there you go, fairies are like that. They don’t use the same moral code as humans do.

“Are you ready to face your fate, boy?” the wicked fairy demands, and produces a spindle from somewhere with a gleaming, nasty-looking point. Poe eyes it for a moment, then shrugs.

“I am,” he says, which seems to baffle the wicked fairy entirely, and reaches out very deliberately to touch his index finger to the spindle’s gleaming point.

The world goes black around him as he falls.

*

Poe is standing in a courtyard he’s never seen before, watching rank upon rank of armored soldiers go through their drills. They’re very...tidy, very regimented, not a hint of personality showing on their solemn faces, but Poe finds his gaze drawn - for no reason he can detect - to a young man in the first row, whose lovely dark face has an expression of deep concentration as he moves through the drills with grace and skill.

When the soldiers are allowed to disperse, the one Poe has been watching glances to the side, and his eyes widen. He’s looking straight at Poe.

*

Poe is watching the soldiers as they eat. The one who draws his eye is a little apart from the others, though there’s nothing about him to obviously set him apart. He eats quickly and neatly, and then stands and leaves the mess hall without looking back. Poe follows him curiously.

They round a corner - no one else seems to see Poe at all, and Poe is nearly certain this is some sort of dream - and reach an empty barracks room. The young man closes the door behind him and then whirls to face Poe, frowning. “Who _are_ you?” he asks.

“My name’s Poe,” Poe says, very confused. “You can see me?”

“Yes, but no one else can,” the young man says, frowning harder. “I asked. Are you one of Lord Ren’s spies.”

Poe can’t help smiling. “If I were, that would be a very foolish question to ask,” he points out. “But no, I’m not. I don’t even know who Lord Ren _is_.”

“Huh,” says the young man, and then there’s a clatter in the hallway as the rest of the soldiers come trotting down to the barracks, and Poe crams himself against a wall as they all come pouring in. Sure enough, none of them gives him so much as a passing glance.

*

Poe isn’t there every minute of the day; time seems to waver and bend around him, so that sometimes he’ll be standing in the courtyard for hours, sometimes he’ll blink and entire days will pass. But he’s always somewhere near the young man whose name he never learns. Poe watches as the young man trains and eats and stands watches, sometimes even as he sleeps, and when the young man can snatch a few spare moments out of sight of all the other soldiers, they talk.

Poe learns his young friend is an orphan, raised by the soldiers of this Lord Ren to become a soldier in his turn. Poe can see, easily enough, that his friend is one of the finest of the trainees, quick and skilled and stubborn and talented; if Poe is any judge, the officers are grooming his friend to become one of them in the not too distant future.

But Poe can also see that his friend wants something more than the life of a soldier. He asks questions constantly when they’re together, about the world outside of Lord Ren’s castle, about the things Poe has seen and done, and Poe finds himself dredging stories from the depths of his memories, spending every moment they’re not talking trying to come up with more scraps of information that his friend might like to hear.

*

It’s been more than a year, by Poe’s young friend’s reckoning, before Poe finally admits that he’s never caught his friend’s name. Poe knows the names - or at least the nicknames - of many of the other soldiers, from the banter they toss around in the barracks or the orders the officers will snap, but not his friend’s.

His friend gives Poe a sad smile, faint in the darkness - they are standing watch together, up on the tall curtain wall of Lord Ren’s castle. “That’s because I don’t have one,” he tells Poe quietly. “We’re all given numbers - the orphans, I mean - and then sometimes we’ll get nicknames, but no one’s ever liked me enough to make one up for me.”

“Well that’s...appalling,” Poe says after a moment’s stunned horror. “Gods be my witness, the more I learn about this Lord Ren the less I like of him. What’s your number, then?”

“FN-2187,” Poe’s friend says easily.

Poe considers this for a minute, then throws caution to the wind and asks, “Can _I_ give you a nickname? Please? I can’t bear to call you by a number.”

“Would you?” Poe’s friend asks, almost wistfully, and Poe wants desperately to put his arms around his friend in comfort, but they’ve learned already that while Poe’s friend can _see_ him, they cannot touch. Poe is as insubstantial as air.

Poe’s mind goes blank for a long moment, and then he says, “Can I call you Finn?”

“Finn,” Poe’s friend says slowly. “Yeah. Yeah! I like that!”

“Finn,” Poe says contentedly, and they pass the rest of the watch standing shoulder-to-shoulder, gazing out into the night with matching smiles.

*

“Poe,” Finn says, some months later, as they’re standing guard over a door in the fortress - it doesn’t really need a guard, but Lord Ren apparently enjoys seeing his soldiers everywhere, for some reason, “why are you here?”

“What do you mean?” Poe asks. He’s amusing himself by seeing if he can feel the difference between stone and mortar when he sticks his hand into the wall; so far, it all feels cold and stonelike to him.

“I mean, you’re a fairy, right?” Finn asks, and Poe bursts into laughter.

“Dear gods, no,” he says cheerfully. “I’m as human as you are.”

“But,” Finn says, frowning in confusion.

“No, I’m just - I’m cursed,” Poe explains. “I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming, in fact. I’m supposed to sleep for a hundred years or until my true love kisses me awake, and I guess the good fairy who kept the curse from killing me didn’t want me to be bored while I waited -” he breaks off as it hits him.

_You will know your true love well enough_. And Poe has spent nearly two years now at Finn’s side, learning him and letting Finn learn him in return.

“How long have you been asleep?” Finn asks, frowning in concern now, and Poe wants to smooth the line between his eyebrows away.

“I don’t know,” he admits instead. “At least as long as I’ve been here with you.” He tries on a cocky grin to reassure his friend. “Hey, at least if I have to be in an enchanted sleep, the company is good!”

“Really?” Finn asks, starting to grin. “I - I’m glad I get to keep you company until your true love finds you,” he adds, almost painfully earnest. “I bet she’s _wonderful_.”

Poe blinks. “It wouldn’t have to be a woman,” he says at last. “I’d like either, you know. I just want someone - someone _good_.”

“Oh,” says Finn, looking startled. “Then I bet she - or he - will be the best person in the whole world.”

Poe, looking at Finn’s beautiful smile, thinks to himself, _Yes. He is._

*

“So where are we off to?” Poe asks Finn, as Finn makes a perfect right-angle turn at the corner of the camp and continues his patrol.

“Don’t know,” Finn murmurs, so softly no one else will be able to hear. “Apparently there are some enemies of Lord Ren’s that need to be destroyed.”

“Huh,” Poe says, and shrugs. He hasn’t been able to figure out which kingdom this is, though he’s tried, which suggests it’s rather far away from his own. He knows no more about the politics of this place than Finn does, which isn’t much at all. “Well, keep your helmet on and your sword up, and don’t get killed,” he tells Finn solemnly.

“I won’t,” Finn promises.

*

Poe isn’t going to be any use except to distract Finn during the fighting, so he stays off to one side as the soldiers form ranks, and parallels them as they march towards their enemies. He’s near the front ranks so he can keep an eye on Finn - for whatever good _that_ will do - and so he comes over a hill as the front ranks do and sees the enemy.

A village. A perfectly normal, peaceful village, settling down to sleep as the sun sets behind the hills. Poe’s heart leaps into his throat. This - this _can’t_ be right. He can’t be about to watch Finn help slaughter villagers who don’t even know the danger approaching them.

He’s too far away to get to Finn before the attack starts - and even if he could, what is he supposed to do, tell Finn to desert in the middle of an attack? So Poe stands frozen atop the hill, watching in horror as Lord Ren’s soldiers close in on the village. He can’t bear to get any closer. He can’t bear to see his true love become - become a murderer.

Screams rise from the village, and flames lick up to light the sunset sky with sickly orange. Poe’s knees give out beneath him, and he realizes suddenly that he doesn’t know if dreams can weep.

And then a single armored figure comes stumbling _out_ of the village, straight towards the hill where Poe sits crumpled in anguish. Finn scrambles up the hill to Poe’s side, and Poe shoots to his feet. Finn’s sword is bright and bloodless, his armor stained with someone else’s blood.

“I couldn’t,” Finn says. “They were - they were just villagers. I couldn’t. I - I have to get away from here.”

Poe’s mind reels. “West,” he says after too long a moment. “My parents’ kingdom borders the western sea. We should go west.”

“West,” Finn says, nodding, and squares his shoulders, and they set off together into the darkening night.

*

Finn leaves his armor buried under a tree that night, though he keeps the sword - no point getting rid of a useful weapon, after all. He’s got a tiny amount of money, not nearly enough to make it to the western coast, but he finds a farmhouse as the sun comes up and chops wood for his breakfast, not seeming to mind the hard labor at all. Poe catches himself ogling the strength in Finn’s broad shoulders and gulps and hopes desperately that he’s interpreting this correctly, that Finn _is_ his true love. Because if he isn’t, Poe’s honestly not sure he could _bear_ to wake to some other person’s face.

They travel by night at first, in case there’s pursuit; Finn stops at isolated farmhouses to work for his morning meal and for bread to carry with him, and most of the farmers’ wives are happy enough to let him chop wood or carry water or toss hay down out of haylofts in return for a single meal. Poe wishes that he could help, but the most he can do is identify useful plants as they travel, pointing them out to Finn, or sometimes find birds’ nests for Finn to raid. Finn seems to appreciate the advice, at any rate, and Poe does his very best to be good company and not to stare too blatantly at Finn’s lips stained red with berries as he smiles.

*

They go west, and west, and west again, following the setting sun into lands neither of them knows. Finn gets good at making friends with farmers’ wives, at bartering for eggs or bread or cheese, and at spotting useful plants and birds’ nests for himself. He’s already strong from years of war-training, but he grows used to constant travel, leaner and somehow sleeker than he was as Lord Ren’s orphan soldier. Poe teaches him every song and story he knows, to make the hours go faster; and every hour in Finn’s company cements Poe’s belief that Finn is his true love.

He can’t quite figure out how to broach the subject with Finn, though. What if Finn truly doesn’t think of him as anything more than a friend?

*

Finn has never seen the sea before, and as they reach the top of the last tall hill before the rocky beach he stops dead, staring at the ocean spread out beneath the light of the rising sun. “Dear _gods_ ,” he says quietly. “I know you told me it was magnificent, Poe, but this is - this is indescribable.”

“It really is,” Poe agrees, and they sit there on the hill together as the sun comes up behind them and the sea turns from black to sunlit gold to perfect blue.

“Alright,” Finn says at last, when the sun is high and warm in the clear sky, “where to now?”

“Find a town, I suppose,” Poe says thoughtfully. “They ought to know which direction Yavin is, and then we can go north or south as necessary.”

“Are you - are you sure you want me in your home country?” Finn asks. Poe startles and turns to face the other man, reaching out as if he could actually touch Finn and only remembering at the last moment that he cannot.

“Of _course_ I do,” he says, and the truth comes spilling out without his conscious decision. “You’re my true love.”

“I am?” Finn asks incredulously, and then his face lights up brighter than the sunrise, more lovely than the sunlit sea. “I _am_?” he repeats softly, joyously.

“I cannot think of any other reason I should have come to you,” Poe admits, “and if you are - and I do believe you are - then I can think of noone I would like better. You are - you are _good_ , through and through, Finn, and sweet and kind and brave and glorious, and I - I do love you.”

“I - I’m not entirely sure what love is,” Finn admits. “But I miss you when you’re not here, and I cannot help but wish to make you smile, and I dream sometimes that you are real and here beside me, so I could hold you in my arms.” He shrugs. “I want you to be safe and happy, whether that is at my side or with someone else as wonderful as you are - so if that’s love, then yes, I love you.”

Poe feels like he could fly - which is not, sadly, one of the powers he has gained by being a dream-specter.

“Then we go to Yavin,” he says instead. “Because if anyone can break my curse, Finn, I am pretty damn sure it’s you.”

*

Poe’s honestly not sure what he’s going to find in Yavin. For all he knows, it’s been a hundred years already, and everyone he knows and loves is dead. If that’s true, it will be - it will be fucking _miserable_ , is what it will be - but he’s sort of been prepared for that since he was old enough to understand the curse, so he’ll probably be able to cope. If that _is_ the case, he almost certainly won’t be getting his throne back - it’s to go to a cousin if he doesn’t wake up in time - but there’s enough money laid aside under careful instructions that he and Finn should be able to make a life for themselves somewhere. Maybe they’ll raise hunting hounds; Poe’s always been good with dogs.

Or if it’s only been a few years - if it’s only been a few years, Poe will be his parents’ heir again, and Finn his Prince Consort when he takes the throne. Poe rather thinks Finn would make a good Prince Consort: he’s kind and even-tempered and clever and generous, and the people of Yavin will love him immediately, if not so strongly as Poe does.

Either way, Poe does not plan to ever leave Finn’s side again, waking or sleeping, for the rest of his days.

He does not think about the possibility that Finn could _not_ be his true love. He cannot bear to. If Finn is not his love - then Poe will dream away a hundred years and die without ever waking, because he cannot imagine finding _anyone_ more perfectly suited to him than Finn.

*

Yavin looks just like it did when Poe fell to the curse, but that doesn’t mean much. Yavin is a sleepy sort of country, pastoral and peaceful; things don’t change quickly within its borders. Poe can imagine things looking much the same if it has been ten years, or fifty, a hundred, five hundred. Yavin is nearly as eternal and unchanging as the sea.

The castle sits proudly on its hill the same way it always has, too, and Poe looks up with his heart in his mouth to see the banners flying above it, and then sits down, hard, in relief and astonishment, because the banner flying proudly above the king’s tower is his father’s golden sword upon a blue shield. His parents are alive.

“You alright?” Finn asks, looking down at him worriedly, and Poe scrambles to his feet again, beaming.

“They’re _alive_ ,” he says. “Come on!”

Finn trots after him through the streets, looking around with interest, and at some later date Poe is _definitely_ going to bring Finn on a long walk through the capital, pointing out all the landmarks and the best places to buy sweets or bread or embroidered ribbons, but right now - right now he needs to see his parents whole and hale and well.

He has to stop at the front gate, though, because the guards, well-trained warriors that they are, eye Finn with deep suspicion when he comes trotting up to the castle with a sword at his side. But Finn surrenders the sword instantly to the nearer guard - Jess Pava, Poe sees with a pang, looking nearly a decade older but _alive, alive, alive_ \- and is duly escorted in.

Old Cethriee is still on duty as the chamberlain, though he’s so old Poe is astonished he hasn’t retired yet, and most of the work is being done by his apprentice. Poe remembers Beebee fondly, though the boy had been barely ten when Poe was cursed, and it takes him a moment to recognize his young partner in mischief in this tall young man. Beebee must be - nearly twenty by now, Poe decides.

A decade. A decade’s not so bad. Sometimes people lost at sea return after a decade, and life goes on.

“And what is your business at court?” Cethriee asks querulously. Finn smiles at him, that broad open smile that makes Poe’s heart beat faster.

“Actually, I’m here to see Poe,” he says.

There’s a pause. At last Cethriee says, “His Highness is...indisposed.”

“He’s cursed,” Finn says plainly. “I think I can wake him.”

There’s a lot of commotion after that.

*

Poe paces nervously as Finn is led up the stairs to the tower room where Poe’s body lies asleep. This _has_ to work. Finn must be his true love. There can be no other reason Poe was sent to him, no other reason Finn suits him so perfectly.

The tower room looks just as Poe remembers it; clearly it is dusted regularly, and the tapestries kept clean. Finn pauses in the doorway and looks around, then smiles.

“It looks like Poe,” he says quietly, and Poe’s parents, behind him, glance at each other in confusion. “He likes birds,” Finn explains, and then he takes three swift steps across the room to where Poe’s body lies, breathing slow and easy, atop the enormous bed, and bends down.

Their lips meet. The world goes black.

*

Poe wakes all in a moment, eyes snapping open, as Finn stands up again, and reaches up to tangle his hand in the fabric of Finn’s tunic. Finn gapes down at him; Poe can’t help grinning. For so long he has been dreaming of being able to _touch_ Finn, of knowing what Finn feels like beneath his hands and lips, and now - at last - at last.

“Get back down here,” he rasps through a throat dry with a decade’s sleep, and Finn smiles as bright as the rising sun and bends down again, and Poe kisses him the way he’s wanted to kiss him for _months_ , the way a man should kiss his own true love.

And when they break the kiss, Poe looks up into Finn’s shining eyes and says, “Marry me. Stay with me forever.”

“Of course,” Finn says, and does.


End file.
